Ukrainian Rating Cheaters

The January 2020 official FIDE ratings are, unfortunately, a complete shame for Ukrainian chess. FM Ihor Kobylianskyi entered the Top-10 in Rapid, while a "GM" Iuri Shkuro, alas, returned to the active blitz rating and returned to the Top-10 in Blitz.

Both of them, Kobyliansky and Shkuro, produced their fantastic ratings in the self-organised tournaments, and this explains all. Both of them never really played on the professional level: they are and were strong amateurs. Both of them rarely have competed in the internationally significant tournaments - and there are not many their games in the ChessBase Mega databases. Thus, there are just 25 games for Kobyliansky and 254 games for Shkuro in the Mega 2019 Database. (Actually, I'm not sure whether I know either of them personally, though maybe I met Kobyliansky or Shkuro at some tournament in our country - I can't completely exclude this). Otherwise, Kobyliansky and Shkuro have not much in common: they are living in the very different parts of Ukraine: Ivano-Frankivsk and Kherson, respectively.

Here I don't want to enter into much detail, and I just apologise for the Ukrainian Chess Federation. And for the whole Ukrainian chess community. Most of our people are tolerant to the rating cheaters, in the same way as they are tolerant to the corruption in government. Our country still has big problems with Dignity.